Trail of blood followed in Schirmer trial

Friday

Jan 11, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Was the blood found in Arthur and Betty Jean Schirmer's car at the 2008 crash scene in Pocono Township caused by Betty Jean hitting her head on the rearview mirror and windshield? Or was Betty Jean bleeding prior to even being in the car?

ANDREW SCOTT

Was the blood found in Arthur and Betty Jean Schirmer's car at the 2008 crash scene in Pocono Township caused by Betty Jean hitting her head on the rearview mirror and windshield?

Or was Betty Jean bleeding prior to even being in the car?

This point of contention was the focus of testimony Thursday, the third day of Arthur Schirmer's trial on charges of fatally injuring his second wife and staging the July 15, 2008, crash to cover up his crime.

Schirmer, 64, was pastor at Reeders United Methodist Church in Jackson Township at the time of the crash and, as a result of the investigation in this case, is now charged also in the 1999 murder of his first wife in Lebanon County.

Schirmer said he was driving Betty Jean to the hospital after she awoke complaining of jaw pain. He said the couple was heading north on Route 715 in Pocono Township, toward Interstate 80, when a deer appeared in the road in front of their PT Cruiser.

Schirmer said he swerved and crashed into the guard rail. He said Betty Jean, 56, was not seatbelted at the time and hit her head. She was pronounced dead the next day at Lehigh Valley Hospital.

Retired investigator Phil Barletto, who was in the state police forensic services unit at the time, continued testifying Thursday.

Barletto said blood found in the garage of the church parsonage where the Schirmers had lived, along with blood found in the couple's vehicle, indicates Betty Jean was injured at home, placed in the car and then driven to the crash scene.

Schirmer said the couple was moving a pile of wood out of the garage, about a month prior to Betty Jean's death, after being asked by an exterminator to do so.

He said the wood fell and cut both him and Betty Jean, resulting in the blood on the garage floor.

Barletto said police found dried blood drops near where the car's front passenger door would have been, believing this blood came from the same source as the blood found in the front passenger seat area.

He said it appeared as though someone had tried to wipe away some of the blood.

Police applied a chemical called phenolphthalein (pronounced "fee-nol-fay-leen"), which positively identified the dried drops as blood by turning pink, according to earlier testimony.

To further confirm this identification, police then sprayed another chemical called luminol onto the blood stains.

Luminol confirms phenolphthalein's chemical reaction when applied to blood stains by giving off a blue glow in the dark.

Police digitally photographed these blue glowing spots marking the location of the confirmed blood stains, and then fed those photos into a computer program to generate "layover" photos to be presented as evidence in court.

Defense attorney Brandon Reish asked Barletto if the photos fairly and accurately depict how the blue glowing spots appeared in the dark on the day those photos were taken.

Reish had asked a previous witness if certain factors, such as the camera being out of focus or shooting at a bad angle, could affect how accurately the sizes and shapes of the glowing spots are depicted in the photos. Echoing previous witnesses, Barletto said it's unlikely.

Photos presented in court show police used ruler scales to mark the locations and sizes of positively identified blood stains prior to applying luminol.

Reish asked Barletto why the luminol had flowed over and illuminated one of the scales if the chemical was supposed to illuminate only blood stains. Barletto called the process accurate and said whatever was illuminated beyond the stains themselves was "just exposure."

If there was any spillover, it's because "you have to keep spraying on the luminol where you're marking the blood for it to keep glowing," Barletto said.

When it came to the blood in the car, Reish asked Barletto if Betty Jean could have hit her head during the crash, as Schirmer said she did, and if blood from that wound could have been further dispersed throughout the passenger area by ambulance personnel removing her from the car.

"There was testimony from two motorists who stopped to help, as well as from ambulance personnel, saying she was actively bleeding when they saw her," Reish said. "Do you recall that testimony?"

Barletto said he did, but that it's more likely the dispersal of blood came from Betty Jean already bleeding when she entered the car in the garage than from ambulance personnel spreading it around.

There's also the issue of the blood being there long enough for some of it to be absorbed into the seat fabric.

When Reish asked if this was due to the amount of time that passed between Betty Jean hitting her head in the crash and being removed from the car, Barletto again said it's more likely the blood was there prior to the crash.

The other question is how fast the car was going when it crashed. Schirmer said it was between 45 and 55 mph.

Matthew DeWalt, vice president of Scott's Collision Center in Stroudsburg, and independent appraiser Christopher Morris, a former Scott's Collision Center employee, both testified the damage was too minimal for the car to have crashed at 45 mph or faster.

"This is by far the fatal accident with the least amount of vehicular and property damage I've ever investigated," said Sgt. Douglas Shook of the state police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Unit, who forensically mapped the scene eight months later.

"Both the driver and passenger should have been able to walk away from a crash so minor it wouldn't even have been reportable under other circumstances."

Shook, whom the defense will cross-examine today, said the car could still be driven, even though it was towed from the scene and impounded.

Coins stayed in place

Though the scene underwent no significant physical changes in the eight months after the crash (other than the guard rail being replaced), Shook said he found no tire "yaw" marks on the road indicating Schirmer had applied the brakes or swerved, or "turfing" damage indicating the anti-lock braking system was in effect on the grass where the car went off the road into the guard rail.

Shook said the crash was so minor that coins weren't even thrown from one of the cup holders, as shown in pictures taken of the car's interior shortly after the crash.